On December 6, 2022, we held consultations with Philips about a new collective labor agreement for the second time. During this meeting we discussed the topics in our proposal letter at length. Below we indicate point by point what Philips' response to these proposals has been so far. We will negotiate further on December 13, 2022. We hope that Philips will then take more steps to accommodate us so that we can return to you with a positive result.
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Duration
Philips also proposes a term of 12 months for the new collective labor agreement.
Pay raise
Philips indicates that, based on the latest developments, they do not have much financial room to meet our wage requirements. For that reason, Philips proposes a wage increase of 3,5% as of May 1, 2023. This is not a final offer, but according to the employer, there is already little room for agreeing on anything else that costs money with this offer. It may be that something that costs extra money still has to be deducted from the pay rise.
Although we can understand the current financial situation of Philips, we do not agree with this proposal, because Philips has been very frugal with pay increases for its employees, even in good times. Philips' bid lags far behind inflation and price increases in energy and fuel costs. A wage increase of less than 6% for 12 months is therefore not acceptable to us for the time being!
Working from home and travel allowance
Travel expenses
Philips is prepared to include the amount of this allowance in the collective labor agreement. Philips recognizes that the current reimbursement is not in line with the market and proposes to increase the commuting costs allowance to € 0,15 if this fits in with the total package of proposals.
We believe that Philips has paid too little travel allowance at € 0,11 per km for years, because the fiscal space is currently € 0,19 cents, and from next year € 0,21. On this basis, we believe that Philips should increase the travel allowance to the maximum fiscal scope.
Homework allowance
Position of Philips: The homeworking allowance is now € 2,35 net. According to Nibud, that is € 3 per day. According to Philips, the amount of the Nibud also includes the purchase costs for furnishing the home workplace. Philips already has a scheme for this, which represents a value of € 1 per home working day. In the opinion of Philips, they already pay € 3,35. Philips' home working scheme is therefore at market level, but for the term of the collective labor agreement it is prepared to increase the net remuneration to € 2,50 per home working day.
We believe that Philips should pay a € 3 homework allowance per day in accordance with the Nibud standard. This standard does not include purchase costs for facilities to work from home, as Philips indicates.
Early retirement RVU
Philips wants to extend this scheme, but without further expanding the current target group. According to Philips, this scheme is too expensive in terms of implementation. As long as we have not seen any substantiation of this position from Philips, we cannot agree with not extending this RVU scheme to all employees.
Sustainable employability
Career check
The right to a career check at the request of the employee will be continued as it is now stated in the current collective labor agreement.
POB (Personal training budget)
Philips is prepared, at our insistence, to continue this scheme with the current budget of € 500.000 on an annual basis. Philips is not prepared to increase this amount further for the same reason as other topics that cost extra money.
De Unie is pleased that this scheme can be continued, but we would have liked to see this amount increased by 10%, as many employees are currently excluded from the scheme due to the limited budget.
Informal care
This has been discussed, but no point of view has yet been made known by Philips.
Result reward
With the arrival of a new Philips CEO and Global Head of Rewards, Philips expects that there will also be new ideas in the field of Annual Incentive (bonus), Sales bonuses and/or scales. Philips proposes to agree a study with the trade unions to discuss further development of the salary policy - in the broadest sense of the word. This also includes the impact of the increase in the minimum wage.
This is certainly negotiable for us, but a profit-sharing scheme as we have proposed in the proposal letter is our preference for the time being.
Fixed Holidays
For the time being, Philips rejects our proposal to accept May 5 as a paid holiday every year without further explanation. We maintain this proposal and await further explanation from the employer.
Workload
Philips recognizes our concerns regarding the increasing workload among current employees and is willing to map this workload with us, possibly with additional research. We find Philips' attitude in this very positive and believe that an external investigation and plan of action should be carried out.
Retirement
Philips proposes to increase the pension contribution by employees from 2% to 8% and to compensate for this increase in salaries. The advantage for employees is that a higher salary is reflected in the base for the Annual Incentive, pension and shift work allowance, for example.
For the rest, the net salary slip for the employees remains the same. Principles for AI and pensions and the like are going up; there is progress. Salary scales are included. Philips wants this to take effect on 1 August 2023. With the higher gross salary, Philips wants to present itself more attractively to new employees in order to be able to compete better on the labor market.
In our opinion, this is a “cigar from our own box” for current employees because they do not immediately improve in net salary. In addition, we regret that Philips will not allow this to take effect before April 1, 2023, so that the indexation gap of pensions can be reduced. We maintain our proposal for equal indexation of pensions for active and inactive people. This also applies to our proposal for voluntary continuation of the new risk-based survivor's pension after (forced) retirement.
CSP (Central Social Plan)
Philips proposes to extend the current CSP by a number of years and to 'simplify' the calculation of the severance payment. The CSP now runs until the end of 2023. Philips wants to lower the correction factor from 1.8 to 1.6. According to Philips, this would be in line with the market. Philips indicates that they need a CSP with a longer duration to guarantee peace in the organization.
In our opinion, the negotiations on a new CSP should be separate from the collective bargaining. Because in this way we prevent the subjects from getting mixed up and we prevent delays in the new collective labor agreement. Until the end of next year we have enough time to agree on a new CSP.
Gender transition policy
For its part, Philips proposes to introduce a new paid leave scheme for people who are in a process of gender transition. Philips offers to be paid for a maximum of 24 times the contract hours per week in a period of 10 years. We have no objection to this if it is not at the expense of the wage increase.
Shift problems
According to Philips, long-term absenteeism in Drachten among older employees working in shifts is a persistent problem. Philips proposes to investigate together with the local trade union leaders in the North whether solutions can be devised, whereby employment conditions are supportive. We have no objection to this. We are, however, critical of the Philips proposal to only be able to use the 5×60 scheme if the non-statutory days have been fully used.
Collective guarantees of salary increase
Philips proposal: as of 31/12, Philips guarantees that for employees who had not yet reached the minimum final salary on 1 January of that calendar year
- these employees(*) have been granted a salary increase(**) of an average of 2,4% in the calendar year.
- no increase has been granted to a maximum of 10% of these employees in the calendar year.
(*) with the exception of BBL employees
(**) excluding collective increase
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If you have any questions regarding this, you can contact the representative Suat Koetloe via suat.koetloe@unie.nl or call 06-5252 2061.
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